John Cowart, Ex-Coffin-Maker

If I never make it as a best-selling author, apparently I can not fall back on coffin making as a second career.

After all the weekend work Ginny and I invested in our beautiful, meaningful, front yard Halloween display, look what happened last night:

Yes, a smattering of wind and rain Monday morning crumpled my coffin.

How tragic.

Here’s what it looks like from another angle at dawn this morning:

And it was only a touch of rain that did that!

Maybe if I’d have used more duct tape?

I thought I built that coffin strong enough to last for three days; I planned to remove it after the last trick-or-treaters leave on Wednesday night. I never thought it would be permanent, but I did expect it to last long enough to accomplish its purpose.

Alas, even more duct tape would not have helped my display last a full 24 hours. My skeleton was doomed from the start… as are all things.

Recent tv news reports are filled with pictures on multi-million-dollar homes in California which burned to piles of rubble in the forest fires. Some homeowners woke from a sound sleep to see flames, run dive into their swimming pools, and watch their homes burn to the ground in less than 30 minutes.

Things it takes years to build can be destroyed in seconds. Remember the World Trade Center skyscrapers?

(The postman just walked up our drive way. He paused looking at the wreck of our display. I see wheels turning in his head as he wonders, “What the heck is that supposed to be”? This display may not be polished effective evangelism but perhaps, it gave him food for thought).

When I first saw the soggy mess this morning, the temptation arose to see it an allegory of my entire life. Time and again I have invested myself into what I thought were good, worthwhile projects only to see them come to futile ruin.

This tempts me to despair.

Why bother doing anything if it all comes to naught?

And every human endeavor does.

The pyramids may stand longer than my coffin, but it’s only a matter of time till they crumble too. The sun will not have time to reach entropy before the pyramids turn to dust in the wind. The degradation of matter and energy in the universe presses on toward an ultimate state of inert uniformity.

So why bother building or doing anything?

Even with the most up-to-date medical care and miracle cures, all patients eventually die. The most educated brain dies — or disappears under Alzheimer’s. The sea claims all ships.. Bridges fall. Money flys. Fame vanishes.

Of course great literature always endures.

That means the books I write are sure to last forever … Won’t they?

Not necessarily.

Can anyone name America’s first best-selling author? She became a celebrity in her day. Her book went through numerous printings. Her fame resounded throughout the English-speaking world.

Ever heard of her?

Her name was Mary Rowlandson. She died in 1678. And I would never heard of her either except I included a few pages about her in my book Strangers On The Earth.

The temporary is not permanent.

St. Paul recognized the true state of things when he wrote:

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire (or in the case of my cardboard coffin, by rain drops); and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Wood, hay, stubble, cardboard & duct tape — such things have their place. But it is temporary, not a permanent place.

The only thing to last forever is people.

You and I will spend all eternity somewhere.

All things considered, the Bible says surprising little about either Heaven of Hell. The Scripture emphasizes our journey more than our destination, our here and now more than our there and then.

No foundation but Christ — then it’s all about what and how we build on that foundation, the Chief Cornerstone, the Stone which some builders rejected.

So, how do I build anything that will last?

If I write like an angel, if I have the gift of prophesy, if I understand all mysteries, if I have faith to move mountains, if I go broke feeding the poor, if I get burned as a martyr — if I do any or all of those things without love, I’m building a temporary shanty on shifting sand right on a fault line.

Love lasts.

Love lasts.

Only love lasts.

Isn’t that romantic?

No.

Love is not a notion. Not a warm fuzzy. It has more substance. Love is dead serious.

The first and great commandment says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”.

And, like that first, the second commandment says, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Anything less is cardboard in the rain…

I’m not sure what to do about our Halloween display now. Repair seems futile because the weather report projects more rain over the next few days from an approaching tropical storm.

I may uproot the whole thing and trash it.

I may just leave the ruin and move the signs.

Not sure what to do.

Oh well, that’s the way the coffin crumbles.